Windows Vista benefits

Can switch user even when joined a domain.

- Provides complete support for languages (by default installs all languages on the computer and even provides options to install MUI, but this is also a problem for disk space).

- Please turn off visual effects and use classic mouse pointers (Windows Animated) in order to get high work efficiency.  When you are entertaining, you can turn on the visual effects.

- Better CPU scheduling so the work experience may be smoother (however the disk scheduling is still not very good).  Much fairer than Windows XP.  When you are running a CPU-intensive application, you won't feel jammed on other applications.

- IO scheduling is supported, though how it can be controlled is not clear.

- Task Scheduler now supports running a missed task immediately when possible.

- Power Plans are now global instead of local for individual users.  This avoids inconsistency.

- The height of the Task Bar is no longer affected by the Language Bar.  The Language Bar now shrinks and expands automatically according to its length.

- The indexing and searching functionality is now widely extended.

- System Restore can be used to recover recent versions of files.

 

Turn off unnecessary services.  See below.

 

Level 0

    - Tablet PC Input Service: start type from Automatic to Manual.

    - Remote Registry: start type from Automatic to Manual.

    - TPM Base Services is stopped and its start type is changed from Automatic

      Delayed Start to Manual, saving about 150KB RAM.

    - UPnP Device Host is stopped and its start type is changed from Automatic

      to Manual.

    - Messenger Sharing Folders USN Journal Reader service is stopped and its

      start type is changed from Manual to Disabled.  This is a Live Messenger

      shared folder feature, which monitors the NTFS USN Journal for updates to

      a folder.

    - Desktop Window Manager Session Manager is stopped and its start type is

      changed from Automatic to Manual.

 

Level 1

    - Ready Boost: start type from Automatic to Manual.

    - Network Access Protection Agent: start type from Automatic to Manual.

    - Superfetch is stopped and its start type is changed from Automatic to

      Manual, saving about 30MB RAM.

 

Level 2

    - Windows Search: start type from Automatic to Manual.  Outloook may depend on it.

 

To make a perfect move of the Documents folder

 

    To change the location of the Documents folder:  Open your profile folder in Explorer, select Documents or other personal folders, open properties, find the location tab, and then you can move them to other locations.

    However, as we all know, since Windows 98, shell folders have different names than actual folders.  The trouble increases on Windows Vista.  For example, when I relocates my Documents folder to D:/Robbie, after that, when I open D: in Explorer, it shows a folder named "Documents" rather than the original "Robbie".  Then, if I want to use the command line inside the folder and run "start .", it won't operate, because when the command line is at "D:/Robbie", "start ." will also start "D:/Robbie", but the shell folder name is not "Robbie", it's "Documents", so the shell can't find the location.  In order to fix this, I tried to rename the "Documents" folder to "Robbie" (this can be done by right-clicking the "Documents" link in the Start menu and modify its name in its properties).  However, Explorer told me there is already a directory named "Robbie" in D:/.  In the end, I figured out a way:

 

    1. Before relocating the Documents folder, rename it to match the name of the target directory.

    2. Relocate the folder.

    3. Delete the desktop.ini file in the target folder.

    4. Later when want to launch a folder window, don't use the "start ." command.  Use the explorer command instead, for example "start explorer .".

    Notes: the name must be changed before relocating.  If you have already relocated, restore to its original location, change the name and relocate it again.

 

To enable searchable winhlp32 on Windows Vista

 

    To enable searchable winhlp32 on Windows Vista, you must first install the winhlp32 update for Windows Vista which includes a non-searchable winhlp32.  This will create necessary registry keys.  Then, you can use the searchable winhlp32.  Otherwise, the search tab won't exist.

 

One disadvantage of Windows Vista

 

    It's that console programs has a much larger working set than on XP and earlier systems.  On XP, typical a console program takes 540KB but on Windows Vista, it is about 2MB.

 

x64 Windows Vista

    Uses "C:/Program Files (x86)" to hold 32-bit applications by default.

    Unlike what Lionel Chen said, Windows Vista x64 does support VirtualStore (technology for UAC).